Siri not perfect...........???

rustypeevee · Mar 16, 2015

Hi everyone. This blows my mind, but in the last 24 hours, I've caught Siri making two different math mistakes. Honest.
I asked Siri the circumference of an 8" circle, and she told me a wrong answer, and continues to, even when I phrase the question in different ways. The correct answer is 25.132 inches. Siri's answer was 50.2655 inches.
I asked Siri the area of an 8" circle, and she told me a wrong answer, and continues to, even when I phrase the question in different ways. The correct answer is 50.26 square inches. Siri's answer was 201.062 square inches.
It shocks me that Apple hasn't found and fixed this--any Ideas from out there, or am I missing something? Thank you. RPV

DaveM · Mar 16, 2015

I tried with the same results. Here's a screen capture of the answer when I said "Circumference of an 8 inch circle." Note that for some reason Siri interpreted an 8 inch circle to mean a radius of 8 inches. See below for the results of my second try.

The second time I rephrased the request to "Circumference of a circle with an 8 inch diameter." Siri interpreted correctly and gave the correct answer. I have no idea why Siri would assume that you're talking about radius when you give the dimension of a circle. Apparently you have to specify that you're talking about diameter when you phrase the request.

scifan57 · Mar 16, 2015

That's why you should be as specific as possible when asking SIRI a question.

rustypeevee · Mar 17, 2015

Wow, now I know how my math teacher felt when I gave HER a 'dog-ate-my-homework excuse.

bscholten · Mar 18, 2015

What iPhone do you have if it is a 4s it might be outdated

Brandon
Scholten

rustypeevee · Mar 18, 2015

Thank you Brandon, but my iPhone is an iPhone 5S. My sister has an iPad, and the SIRI on there gives the same wrong answers. Apple 'experts' imply that it's perfectly acceptable for SIRI to misinterpret what is meant by circumference and area, but whatever............... I'm not the poor kid who's going to fail a math test................

xrayeyes · Mar 18, 2015

Love my iPhone but "sad" is the day that we rely on a darn phone to gain knowledge. Sigh...

bear7962 · Mar 18, 2015

Well if you are going to look at it that way, Siri is clearly showing you the answer provided by Wolfram Alpha to the question you asked. Context and wording matter until they develop an app that can read minds. Lol

DaveM · Mar 19, 2015

This is interesting, I admit. Although I personally think that the correct answer ought to have resulted from rustypeevee's original query, I'm old school enough that I probably would have avoided some of the confusion by just saying "Eight times pi." When I do that Siri does produce the right answer, and even reads it off to 4 decimal places.There's definitely a lesson to be learned about not depending on computers to understand what we mean, and to not blindly accept an answer. Rusty knew that the answer wasn't correct, but not everyone would. If we become too dependent on letting our smart devices solve problems for us we'll lose our ability to do it ourselves, and won't know when we have a right answer or not.